Coldplay Is Coming To India And You Don’t Have To Spend A ‘Chavanni’ To Watch Them

Indian fans of Brit alt-rock band Coldplay have been on an emotional rollercoaster ever since the band’s lead singer Chris Martin did an impromptu gig at a Delhi pub in July last year.

Even as people were green in envy about the AIB guys witnessing it, the band went on to shoot ‘Hymn for the Weekend’ in the bylanes of Mumbai, featuring our very own Sonam Kapoor.

With hopes for a concert in India reaching feverish levels, the band kept everyone guessing. ‘Will they, won’t they?’ became more important than ‘To be or not to be?’.

Then came September 9, 2016. After reports that tickets for the Mumbai concert of the band will range from Rs 25,000 to Rs 5 lakh, fans experienced a ‘khoonkeaansoo’ moment. Kidney jokes reserved especially for the Apple launches made their way on social media in the context of the concert.

Vijay Nair, CEO of Only Much Louder (OML), in a series of tweets, dismissed the claim saying that 90% of the tickets for the Global Citizen Festival, which is bringing Coldplay to India, are free.

After the story of Coldplay’s proposed concert in India topped all the trends on social media on Friday, Global Citizen’s Twitter handle finally made the official announcement –

Global Citizen is an organisation dedicated to bringing social change via citizen partnership. The platform was founded in 2012, and since then, six million ‘actions’ have been taken to solve the challenges the world faces today. These are taken in support of education, equality, and sanitation campaigns and can be anything from tweeting about a cause to pledging to sign petitions.

According to the Global Citizen website, a majority of the tickets for the festival cannot be bought. Fans will have to download the Global Citizen app via iTunes for iPhones and Google Play store for Android gadgets. Once you download the app, you will be notified about ‘Taking Action’.

Users of the app will have to fulfill those actions and they will earn points after the completion of every action.

After a certain amount of points, users can enter the lottery draw to get tickets for the festival. If the user wins the draw, they will get two tickets. Leading up to the festival dates, Global Citizen will press for various issues. If users don’t win in the first draw, they will have that many opportunities to win.

With the launch of the app in India of September 12, Global Citizen will embark on a 15-year-long campaign to mobilise social change in India. The November 19 concert is part of that campaign.

The Global Citizen Festival will follow the same format used at their annual celebration in New York where 80% of the tickets are free and the rest will be paid entry, a spokesperson said.

So you can start ‘Taking Action’ in support of education, equality, and sanitation campaigns from September 12 after the app goes live in the country and earn their tickets.